> Skip to content
  • Published: 3 October 2005
  • ISBN: 9781741660227
  • Imprint: Vintage Australia
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 832
  • RRP: $19.99

Illywhacker




‘ILLYWHACKER is such an astonishing novel, of such major proportions, that before saying anything else one must record gratitude for its existence.’ Geoffrey Dutton, Bulletin

In Australian slang, an illywhacker is a country fair con man, an unprincipled seller of fake diamonds and dubious tonics. And Herbert Badgery, the 139-year-old narrator of Peter Carey's uproarious novel, may be the king of them all. Vagabond and charlatan, aviator and car salesman, seducer and patriarch, Badgery is a walking embodiment of the Australian national character - especially of its proclivity for tall stories and barefaced lies.As Carey follows this charming scoundrel across a continent and a century, he creates a crazy quilt of outlandish encounters, with characters that include a genteel dowager who fends off madness with an electric belt and a ravishing young girl with a dangerous fondness for rooftop trysts. Boldly inventive, irresistibly odd, ILLYWHACKER is further proof that Peter Carey is one of the most enchanting writers at work in any hemisphere.

  • Published: 3 October 2005
  • ISBN: 9781741660227
  • Imprint: Vintage Australia
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 832
  • RRP: $19.99

About the author

Peter Carey

Peter Carey was born in Bacchus Marsh, Victoria, and now lives in New York. He is the author of fourteen novels (including one for children), two volumes of short stories, and two books on travel. Amongst other prizes, Carey has won the Booker Prize twice (for Oscar and Lucinda and True History of the Kelly Gang), the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize twice (for Jack Maggs and True History of the Kelly Gang), and the Miles Franklin Literary Award three times (for Bliss, Oscar and Lucinda and Jack Maggs). He is an officer of the Order of Australia and a Fellow of both the Royal Society of Literature and the American Academy of Arts and Letters.

Also by Peter Carey

See all

Praise for Illywhacker

‘A book of awesome breadth, ambition, and downright narrative joy.... ILLYWHACKER is a triumph.’ Washington Post Book World